During the winter of 2009-2010, we experience several crippling snow storms in the American Northeast. The Internets replied like a alcoholic asked to guard a case of scotch. The Moonie Washington Times displayed its rightwing contempt for "liberal" science: "Record snowfall illustrates the obvious: The global warming fraud is without equal in modern science." 

Efforts to convince deniers that extreme weather is consistent with anthropogenic climate change are best reserved for Sisyphus. When naysayers bashed climate change theory on a local forum, I was able to squash their contempt without a single point of data.

The contemptuous right understands one thing: money. Last January with two feet of snow on the ground I posed this challenge to every climate change denier on the forum: I will cover this wager for any amount for anyone who wants to take it: 2010 will be one of the top ten warmest years on record. 

You can understand why some think evolution is bullshit. Imagine if best humans of each successive generation produced people whose asses glowed each time they wanted sex. Yet this was the process through which fireflies found themselves with glow-in-the-dark butts. We can light our farts but women don't respond like lightning bugs. (You win this round, fireflies) 

Unfortunately for evolution's critics, the implausibility of illuminous asses hardly falsifies the theory. The best way unseat a prevailing theory is to propose an alternative model that better explains the facts. This new theory should make verifiable predictions that are not anticipated by the old one. Darwin predicted a mechanism that would pass traits to ensuing generations, a notion that contradicted Lamarck's soft inheritance. Modern genetics settled the dispute in Darwin's favor.

Unable to propose alternative theories that satisfy science and a particular worldview, critics continue to nip at evolution's heels. Criticisms generally take the form of a question: If evolution is so real, why are humans not evolving further?

The inquisitor suffers from near-sightedness. What? -- because you resemble grandpa evolution is bullshit? Evolutionary change requires more than three generations but that doesn't mean we can't recognize it. 

Consider this: Ten thousand years ago, humans began to cultivate rice in Asia. They soon discovered that fermentation made rice better and got wasted on sake. Drinking and carousing must have posed a threat to survival because a variant gene that protects against alcohol soon became prominent in the wake of rice cultivation. 

Meanwhile, 3000 years ago in Tibet a gene variation enabled indigenous people to thrive in the low oxygen environment of the Tibetan highlands. It represents another genetic response to local conditions. If this study withstands peer-review, it represents one of the most recent examples of human evolution. 

Most of us continue to evolve....